Do the Oscars Matter? Do the Movies Matter? | Brian Umana

February 18, 2015 9:32 PM

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Do the Oscars matter? Americans are of course talking about the upcoming spectacle, and a few people are even occasionally discussing merits of the nominees rather than just handicapping the horse race. But we are also talking about emoji and whether Leo and Rihanna spent Valentine's Day together. The intellectual bar is not high for our popular attention.

What does it mean for anything to matter in our popular culture, anyway? Our most cynical countrymen would say sales are the only measure of whether a pop product matters, and it's an admittedly straightforward standard, if a bad one. The movies still hold enough imaginative value for enough moviego...